Part Three

Twenty

Captain Hsu had brought only one mule, not an ancient one but not a sprightly one, either. He climbed on first, then offered a hand up to Shirley. She pulled herself onto the animal’s back, more awkwardly than she had hoped, her skirt and linen riding coat tangling in her legs before she finally settled into position.

“You will fall sitting that way,” he said.

“This is how we do it at Vassar. We call it sidesaddle.”

“Traditional Chinese ladies sit that way, too. You need trousers instead. How can a woman carry a pistol in her belt or hop onto a horse at a moment’s notice in such a frilly outfit?”

“My outfit isn’t frilly,” she said and smoothed her skirt. “And besides, I hope to never do such things.”

“In China, everyone should have these skills.”

He kicked the mule with his heels, and Shirley grabbed his belt as they lurched forward. In trousers, she could have dug into the animal’s sides with her legs to stabilize herself. And she had to admit, he was right that learning to shoot a rifle or hop on horseback or even do occasional manual labor would be good for any woman’s character—and perhaps hers in particular.

They headed out of town on rocky paths through the fields to the east. A cool breeze, bearing the first hint of autumn, came steadily from across the plains. She wrapped her riding coat around her and wondered if the damp air meant the possibility of rain, though no clouds obscured the moon as it rose over the distant mountains receding behind them to the west. The mule seemed to know the way over the terrain, the rhythm of its steps steady even in the dark. Shirley and Captain Hsu did not speak. The sky overhead was blacker than any she had ever seen before, and more filled with stars. Shirley shivered and couldn’t help wrapping her arms more tightly around him as they pressed on.

After some time, they reached a butte surrounded by a tangle of rock outcroppings. The mule wove up the narrow trail until they came upon a hidden enclave of tents that, to Shirley’s surprise, reminded her of the summer camp on Lake Erie she had attended as a girl. Several large, open-sided structures defined the perimeter, with smaller makeshift canvas ones dotted all around. Captain Hsu stopped the mule and called out. A young soldier trotted over and offered a quick bow, but when he lifted his lantern and noticed her seated behind the captain, the boy let out a giggle.

“Help Nurse Carson,” Hsu instructed him. Then, in English, he said to Shirley, “These country boys have never seen a white person before, and certainly not a lady.”

Shirley let the young soldier take her hand and did her best to slip down gracefully. Captain Hsu headed directly into the camp, and she had to hurry to keep up. They entered an area where some injured soldiers had been placed in rows, their feet facing a low-burning bonfire. A few were wrapped in thin blankets, but many lay directly on the rocky ground.

Shirley hurried to join Captain Hsu, who stood now with a group of officers. They hardly acknowledged her but seemed concerned with some important business. When Captain Hsu finally introduced her to the men, she bowed low and listened attentively for their names, some of which struck her as familiar. Several were among the Red leaders who had brought men, and even some women, all the way across the vast country in a mass military exodus. She had no doubt that her husband, and those who had joined their cause along the way in the Long March, admired these thin and ragged-looking men before her and considered them brilliant strategists and brave heroes.

Captain Hsu motioned her to follow, and they wove through an outdoor clinic area where several more injured lay on cots. While their condition appeared stable, and not requiring urgent care, no one was attending to them. A good many of the soldiers seemed in need of proper clothing. Some wore no shoes, and to Shirley, their cut and swollen feet were the saddest sight of all. Captain Hsu stopped just outside a tent and nodded for her to enter.

“What’s this about?” she asked. “Where are you sending me?”

“He wishes to see you.”

“Who?”

“Our leader.”

“I see,” she said and looked back at the rows of injured soldiers. “I’m honored to meet him but would much prefer to help as a nurse. Couldn’t I do that instead?”

“No. You will see him now.”

“But won’t you come with me?” she asked. “I would feel more comfortable if you did.”

Shirley searched for something in Captain Hsu’s far-off expression. Was she right to think that he, too, considered her his charge and wanted to keep watch over her? To her surprise in that moment, his hand reached out and awkwardly brushed a stray curl off her forehead. He had never done anything so forward before, nor so gentle and kind.

“You will be all right,” he said. “Everyone knows that you are the brave Nurse Carson.”

A high, thin laugh escaped her lips. “Everyone except you. To you, I will always be a frivolous American woman.”

His even gaze met hers, their eyes perfectly aligned, and she thought she saw a glimmer of warmth she had not seen before. “I do not praise you, if that is what you mean. But you have worked hard.”

Shirley let the glow of his words wash over her. All her life, men had complimented her on her appearance or her cleverness, but she never valued their praise half as much as Captain Hsu’s stingy assessment now.

“All right, Captain, I’ll do as you say.”

“Good,” he said and held open the flap of the tent for her to enter.

In the dimness, Shirley did not notice the soldiers at attention just inside the door until one gestured for her to continue deeper into the shadowy room. She stepped around books stacked high on the threadbare Chinese carpet. On a rickety table lay maps and more piles of books. A young soldier poured tea from an earthenware pot. Shirley thought she was alone with the soldiers and wondered if she would have to wait long for Captain Hsu’s leader. But as her eyes adjusted, she saw a reclining figure stretched out on a military cot tucked against the sloping back wall of the tent. A crackling red burst of light came as the reclining person lit a pipe.

“Please sit, Mrs. Carson. Thank you for coming to this remote camp.”

She bowed but could not tell if he was even turned in her direction. His English was good, she noticed, though mostly she felt distracted by his peculiarly high voice. It had the reedy timbre of a young woman’s. She looked about for a chair, but, not finding one, decided to kneel on the thin carpet instead. She spread her skirt over her legs and hoped that seemed respectful.

“What can you tell me about the noninterventionist movement in America?” he asked. “Do they hold much sway?” His pipe glowed again.

Shirley cleared her throat. “I know very little about politics, sir. My husband was more informed and involved than I am.”

“We have reports that students are starting to rally on campuses, calling themselves America First.”

“I’m afraid I never bothered with the news,” she said. For a long moment, he did not reply, and she waited for him to ask something else, but when he didn’t and went back to puffing on his pipe, she ventured to continue. “I believe, though, that if Americans had any idea what was going on here, they’d want to put a stop to the Japanese atrocities immediately.”

He sat up, his high forehead catching the lamplight. She recognized his distinct profile from the papers. “You think so?” he asked.

“Absolutely. We have never cottoned to dictators. We can’t abide countries marching in and oppressing their neighbors.”

Still in shadow, the leader of the Reds reached for his cup and slurped from it. Then he let out a delicate belch.

His high voice cut through her thoughts again. “I understand that you are a nurse.”

Shirley pulled back her shoulders and prepared for the real reason for her visit. “I have been honored to care for the people of my province and the good men who serve in the Red Army. They are fine boys, not educated, perhaps a bit simple,” she said, and immediately regretted it, “but brave. Very brave. I’m sure you are exceedingly proud.”

She could hear him bite down on his pipe stem and belch softly again.

“Now that I have seen the conditions closer to the front, I am prepared to help here as well, if it is needed,” she said. “I hate to see patients go uncared for.”

He stood. Shirley blinked in the dim light but felt quite certain that she was looking at his pudgy bare feet on the old rug. His pant legs were frayed, and he wore no uniform, just dark pants and shirt, like a shopkeeper in a poor provincial town.

“Help if you are asked to,” he said, “but I do not think you are needed here.” Then he bowed. “Thank you for coming, and good evening, Mrs. Carson.”

She rose to her feet, too, and realized she was supposed to bow now, but she couldn’t help feeling that nothing of significance had been said between them. “Is there anything else I can offer you or your men?”

“It is an embarrassing problem,” he began as he stepped out of the shadows and set his pipe and cup on the table, “but I seem to have developed indigestion. No one must know that I would consider a Western remedy for my discomfort, but any suggestion you make is appreciated. We will keep it just between us.”

This couldn’t be the reason he had called her here, she thought.

“You have advice for me, Mrs. Carson?” he asked again.

“I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable, sir. I don’t suppose you can get your hands on antacid tablets?” she asked. “Plain baking soda would do. Sodium bicarbonate. Do you know it?”

He shook his head and poked out his bottom lip. “Not much is available here.”

“Then the best solution is the old Chinese one. Ginger, finely chopped and taken in a cup of tea.”

He clapped his hands. “Excellent. That remedy does me little good, but at least there is nothing better.”

Shirley refrained from contradicting him. “But there must be something else I can help you with?”

He lifted a book from the table and began to leaf through it. “No, I don’t think so. I assume you are going back to America soon?” he asked.

Shirley paused before answering. She had promised her son earlier in the evening that she would depart with him and the others when they left the mission for Shanghai. That plan remained her intention, but seeing the injured boys at this Red Army camp, not to mention having in mind those who might still arrive at her own clinic, made her waver yet again in her decision.

“That is my plan,” she said. “But, to be honest, I’ve come to find the work deeply rewarding. I do still wonder if I can be of assistance here in North China, perhaps to continue my success at the clinic?” Her voice rose into a question, the pleading, unsure tone hard to mask. She wanted him to decide for her, this leader of the Reds so accustomed to issuing orders. But his nose remained buried in a book, and she wasn’t sure he had even heard her.

“No,” he suddenly said and slammed the book closed. “Absolutely not. You must go back to America right away.”

Shirley took a step back. “I must, sir?”

“Stop calling me ‘sir,’” he practically shouted. “Say ‘comrade.’ That is what we are. Comrades. Do you understand the difference?”

For the first time, she felt frightened by the force of the man.

“You must go back to your people in America,” he said and started to pace. “Visit your churches, and neighbors, and politicians. Tell them not to listen to the noninterventionists. Tell them we need America here and on our side. Now! Do you understand?”

Shirley nodded.

“You can do much more there than here,” he said. “Now, go.”

Shirley tried to compose herself. Whenever she had pictured herself stateside, she saw her stultifying childhood home in Cleveland, pointless lunches with her mother and her friends at the country club, or shopping with Kathryn and her mother at dull department stores. Going home meant a certain death of spirit, she was sure. But this Red leader was offering an altogether different vision of her future that seemed difficult to fathom.

“I’m not sure I understand,” she said.

“You are an upper-class lady,” he said. “You do not belong in the midst of all this. A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery! It is work.” His voice remained jarring and loud and commanding. “Those superficial pastimes are all you know how to do, am I right?” he asked. “Not this.”

She gathered up her courage and said, “Well, I am a trained nurse, you know. And proud of it now.”

“All right, then, be a nurse. But in America, not here,” he said. “First, though, go to your university president, your bank-owner friends, your fat-cat acquaintances. Raise money, and send it to us!” He rose onto the balls of his bare feet on the carpet. “Why are you here when you could be doing so much more for us there? Go!” he shouted. “Go back to America. You have a job to do!”

Her hand trembled as she brushed back hair from her brow. “Yes, of course, you’re right, sir. Awfully right,” she added, “I mean comrade.”

He shook his head and said in a more measured tone, “Good evening, Mrs. Carson. Now, off you go.” He waved her toward the door, snatched another book from the table, and threw his heavy frame down onto the cot.

She backed away but stumbled over a stack of books and then another. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled and knelt down to put them back in order.

“Leave them,” he barked from the shadows. “I am finished with those, anyway. I have read them already.”

Shirley stood and glanced around at the hundreds of volumes in piles all around her. “You have read all of these?” she couldn’t help asking. “That’s remarkable.”

He let out a pleased chuckle. “Yes, it has been a productive summer. Earlier, we had skirmishes with the Japanese Imperial Army and won over the people by fighting an enemy they despise.” His voice softened even more, as if they were old friends. “But of course, Mrs. Carson, the many wounded and dead Red Army soldiers seem a tragedy to you.” He sucked air between his teeth and offered an apologetic sigh. “Yet it cannot be helped. We have let the Nationalists take over the battle with the Japanese, and they lose ten times more men than we do while we sit tight here in the North. But soon enough, we will reengage according to a new policy.” He cleared his throat and raised the book into the air as if it could light the way forward. “I will declare that Chinese do not fight Chinese! We will act as a true United Front, not just in name. Together we will rid our country of the dwarf barbarians. Peasants and landlords must fight side by side to throw off the imperialist yoke!”

He fanned himself with the book. “But in this miserable heat, my men learn to read and write and train to be better soldiers. An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy. So we farm a little. We raise goats. And I read in order to become a more educated man. All in all, a most satisfying summer.”

Shirley wished she could engage him further but bowed quickly and said good-night.

“Good night, Nurse Carson,” he replied as she stepped out of the tent. “Safe travels back to your home county.”

Twenty-one

Captain Hsu stood alone—solitary and quiet for a moment, a man usually surrounded by people. Shirley couldn’t imagine what went through his mind as he gazed into the embers. From such different worlds, their paths had crossed and even joined for a time, but she hardly knew him and never would. She allowed herself to finally realize that she would be leaving soon.

“I hope you had a successful meeting,” he said as she stepped closer.

“Did you know that he reads an extraordinary amount?”

“There is much to learn.”

“He had advice for me. Rather stern advice.”

“And you are actually willing to follow it?”

“I believe so,” she said with a smile. “He has instructed me to go back to America right away and raise funds and awareness for your cause. He thinks I will be of more use there than here.”

“That sounds correct,” he said and turned her way. “But I will be sad to see you go, Nurse Carson. I will miss you.”

He had never spoken so openly before, and it made her blush.

“We are friends,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “and comrades.”

They would say their good-byes soon, and she would return home to tell others about the worthy work of the Communists in China. But in her mind, and perhaps even her heart, she would be remembering this moment when Captain Hsu had confirmed their friendship and then gracefully let her go.

“I will take you back to the mission first thing in the morning,” he said. “It is too late tonight to travel. You can sleep a few hours, and we’ll depart at dawn.”

“But I told Charles I’d be home tonight. I’d like to go now, please.”

“I’m sorry, but I must attend a meeting. Our leader accomplishes a great deal in the dead of night. I will escort you to the women’s tent. Comrade Li is in charge there, and she will give you a change of clothing. You can rest for a while.”

She followed him through the camp, passing the injured soldiers and groups of men who sat chatting on their bedrolls and playing cards at makeshift tables. Many of them bowed their heads deferentially as Captain Hsu passed. She wanted to ask him about his role at the camp and the workings of the Eighth Route Army. If she was going to tell people about it back home, she needed to learn more. She would press Captain Hsu to fill her in as they rode back to the mission together in the morning.

But for now, she noticed that the men appeared content, despite their poor nutrition and lack of proper weapons, uniforms, and supplies. Shirley could tell she was being converted to the Communist cause, precisely what Reverend Wells and Kathryn had warned her against. And yet, she thought, if only they could see these soldiers, who did not swagger or misbehave. The rural Chinese boys seemed the opposite of the Japanese soldiers, who had been trained to lose their humanity in war. These young men, reading by candlelight and carrying on discussions in serious tones, appeared to be gaining theirs.

“Comrade Li is expecting you,” said Captain Hsu. “She’s a bit gruff, but I think you’ll be fine. I will collect you at dawn.”

He offered a quick bow and departed. Shirley stepped inside the long, open-sided building, where a sea of women soldiers lay asleep on straw mats. At the near end, several sat whispering in conversation by a flickering oil lamp. Shirley went to them and bowed to the oldest of the group, a matron with a waist as thick around as her chest.

“Good evening, Comrade Li,” Shirley said in the local dialect and bowed again.

The younger women giggled, apparently amused by the sight of her. She looked down at her disheveled appearance. Her lace skirt was covered in yellow dust, and the linen of her riding coat appeared wrinkled and stained. Her untucked blouse was open low, exposing a gold necklace bearing the phoenix charm that Caleb had given to her. Shirley wasn’t dressed formally, or particularly well, but these women in pale-blue uniforms and gray caps with thick belts to hold up their pants might never have seen a white woman before, or a woman dressed for anything but difficult work. The younger ones had narrow hips and hardly any breasts, and Shirley assumed they were underfed, even starving, farm girls who, like their brothers, had joined up when the army passed through their desolate provinces and felt lucky to be here.

“Captain Hsu brought me,” she said with another bow.

“I know who you are.” Comrade Li studied Shirley from the toes of her riding boots up past the hem of her skirt and the length of her long coat, then let out a disapproving grunt. “Uniform there.” She pointed to a pile of folded clothing at the foot of a cot.

A strong body odor emanated from the older woman when she lifted her arm, and Shirley told herself not to be prissy and particular. She thanked the matron and went to retrieve the clothing she had been assigned. When she looked about for a private place to change, Comrade Li gave a sharp look and Shirley understood she was meant to disrobe right there. The young women followed her with great curiosity and watched as she began to undress. When she removed her riding coat and placed it on the straw mat, the boldest of the girls reached over and ran a finger down the lapel.

Shirley said, “Try it on if you like.”

The girl’s eyes brightened as she snatched it up. She was about to slip her arm into the sleeve when Comrade Li sauntered over and reached out a hand. The girl gave it to her, and Comrade Li tried to fit it over her substantial frame, but the seams pulled across her broad back. The older woman took it off in disgust. Shirley gathered it and swung it over the matron’s shoulders like a cape. The girls seemed to like that, and Comrade Li gave an approving nod.

Shirley pulled on a pair of light-blue cotton pants and a matching tunic. She cinched the belt at her waist. Finally she slipped into a pair of thin canvas shoes that were too small, so she wore them as sandals with the heels flattened. The other women watched as she set a green army cap with the red star upon her head. Although there was no mirror with which to check, Shirley could tell from their abundant smiles that it looked fine.

“If you stay long enough, we will cut off your fancy curls!” Comrade Li let loose a guttural laugh and tugged on a handful of Shirley’s thick, wavy hair. “Western women wear hair every which way. Very decadent hair! But now we sleep,” Comrade Li said. “You lie next to me, and I make sure you do not wander off.”

Captain Hsu would have been proud of the restraint Shirley showed. “That is very kind of you, Comrade Li, but I would like to get some air before I sleep. I want to walk around. I ask your permission to go,” Shirley said and bowed. Comrade Li looked repulsed by the strange habits of American women but dismissed her.

Outdoors again, Shirley was plunged into country darkness. The bonfire had gone out. Across the vast sky, the stars seemed to have only multiplied since earlier in the evening, a pale wash strung from horizon to horizon. Three swift shooting stars passed overhead in a period of minutes, each a small, startling miracle. They left behind tails that hung in the blackness long enough to become etched into Shirley’s memory. She was in an army camp halfway around the world from where she had been born, in a danger zone, and yet she felt strangely at ease and even energized by the autumn air that rolled across from the distant mountains. So much seemed possible.

Captain Hsu stepped out of the shadows, a cigarette glowing in his hand. “Comrade Carson,” he said, his white teeth showing as he smiled, “that uniform looks good on you. But did you not like your sleeping accommodations?”

“I was assigned a problematic bedmate.”

“Soldiers do not usually have a choice in such matters. I believe you were treated in a special way again.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. There’s no disguising it. I am a foreigner here, with all the privileges and complications that entails.”

He took a drag on his cigarette and passed it to her, and she took it.

“We should get some sleep,” he said, “even for an hour or two. Here, come with me.”

She went with him into the second large, open-sided structure. In the flickering light, she saw the sleeping bodies of several hundred Chinese soldiers. Some lay curled on their sides on mats. Others lay on their backs on the hard dirt floor, their mouths open and snoring. Many pressed up against each other in a jumble, like puppies, Shirley thought. Captain Hsu did not pause but stepped over and around the sleeping men, and she followed.

When they reached an opening large enough for them both, Captain Hsu sat down and began to unlace his boots. Shirley glanced around and saw they were near the very center of the space. It made her uncomfortable to be surrounded by men on all sides, but no other spot appeared available. Captain Hsu took off his cap but left his boots on. Then he offered her his hand and gestured for her to wedge herself in beside him.

Shirley sat, too, and took off her cap and canvas shoes as the captain settled into a sleeping position on his side. Seeing no other options, she lay down on her side in front of him. He scooted forward and, as if it was nothing unusual, leaned his chest against her back and draped an arm over her shoulder. Shirley and Captain Hsu spooned. She lay stock-still, her limbs rigid, her mind buzzing with concern. As she was trying to think what to say to him to clarify their friendship and to make sure that he did not misunderstand her fondness for him, he began to snore.

Shirley smiled to herself as her tense and exhausted body leaned into the good captain. She listened to his breathing, then to the exhalations all around. Slowly she became quiet inside. Her own breathing blended with the waves of the many other breaths. As she started to drift off, she remembered Caleb’s words: We are one. In a room crowded with Chinese soldiers, Shirley felt safer and more at peace than she could ever recall feeling before.

...

Voices woke her with a start, and she sat up, Captain Hsu no longer at her side. Only a few soldiers remained in the vast tent. Shirley couldn’t imagine how she had slept through the departure of the others. Morning sunlight sliced over the nearby rocks, signaling that it was long past dawn. She yanked on her canvas shoes and cap and hurried outside. Soldiers ran in all directions, carrying supplies and rifles on their shoulders. She wove through them and did not stop to ask what was going on, hoping to find Captain Hsu at the center of the camp.

But at the entrance she was slowed by the sight of incoming wounded, some carried on stretchers, others stumbling against one another. Shirley knelt beside a new arrival, a young man shot in the shoulder. She would need hot water and pincers to remove the bullets and was furious again for having left her medical kit back at the clinic.

“Excuse me,” she asked a passing soldier, “I need boiling water and surgical instruments. And bandages. I’m a nurse. I’m here to help.”

The young man stared at her and finally gestured to a nearby tent before hurrying off. Through the open flaps, she could see several men leaning over a patient as they performed what appeared to be a surgical procedure.

“I’m here to help,” she said to a soldier at the entrance.

He did not respond, and she remembered that these boys came from all over the country. There was no telling what version of the language they spoke.

“I’m a nurse,” she tried again.

He motioned with his rifle for her to leave. When the boy glanced away, she slipped past, but a different soldier stepped forward, his rifle pointing directly at her. He shouted in a dialect she didn’t know, although his meaning was clear. More soldiers formed a circle around her. Shirley pushed away from them and marched off. She searched again for Captain Hsu. She felt useless without him. She wondered if she could possibly hurry to the mission that morning and return with nurses and supplies. The trip had not seemed long the night before. She spotted the old mule that had brought them and had known the route. Shirley headed toward it now.

But just then, a horse-drawn cart pulled up, and Shirley saw the strikingly blond hair of one of the passengers. She went to greet the foreigners and offer them assistance but stopped short. On the bed of straw in the back lay a pale man, his neck sliced almost all the way through and his chest punctured. If he wasn’t dead yet, he would be very soon. His wife and daughters sat weeping over him. They, too, were splattered with blood, overly bright and gaudy in the morning light.

“Where are you from?” Shirley shouted to be heard above the many panicked Chinese voices. “How did this happen?”

The mother kept her arms around her daughters, who shook and wailed against her sides. She was a fine-boned blonde woman in a pretty calico dress ripped open all the way down, blood over her cheeks and legs. The daughters’ dresses, too, had been torn, and their hair was matted with blood and their eyes glazed. The mother finally looked up and saw Shirley but didn’t seem to recognize that she was a foreigner, too.

“We’ll take care of you,” Shirley said. “You’re safe now.” She reached over and closed the woman’s dress. “Where did this happen?”

The woman’s voice was hardly a whisper. “Our home.”

An old Chinese man, their number-one boy or cook, had fallen against one of the wooden wheels. He had been badly beaten, his shoulder dislocated, the arm hanging wrong.

Shirley crouched beside him and asked, “Where are you from?” But his gaze did not rise from the ground. “The Anglican compound to the west of town? Is that it?” she asked.

This must be the new British family that had arrived not long before. She and Caleb had planned to invite them to tea, but then he had gone on his expedition to the outlying churches and never come back. Shirley shouted for some Red Army soldiers to carry the foreigners into camp. As stretchers arrived at the wagon, Shirley stood and went for Captain Hsu’s mule but spotted a horse tied up nearby. She unhitched it, grabbed the reins, and mounted with ease. She dug her heels into the animal’s sides and galloped out of the camp, frantic to return home to her son.

As clouds crossed the sun, she followed the winding trail down from the rocky ledge. After a half-hour descent, she was able to see far across the plains, her destination of the town and the mission a simple route through the flatlands. With some luck, she could be there in another hour or so. She pressed onward and tried not think about Charles and the others, although they were all she could think of.

At a bend in the trail, a stream crossed, and Shirley felt the frothing horse balk. She should have noticed it was already worn out when she took it, probably having just arrived from some great distance. She decided to let the animal have a quick drink. She dismounted, and the horse hung its head over the bank. The branches of a weeping willow skimmed the water, dragging thick green tendrils of summer. The breeze was up, and the clouds had grown darker, rolling in from the mountains to the west. She needed to get home before the rain arrived. She needed to get home to be sure her boy was all right.

As Shirley started to gather up the reins, she heard fast-approaching horses and saw that Japanese soldiers rode them. Before she had a chance to mount, the cock of a rifle sounded close behind her. The two soldiers began to shout as they jumped down from their horses. A moment later, she felt the point of a bayonet between her shoulder blades. She lifted her arms, stepped away from her horse, and stumbled in the direction of the stream. They knocked her to the ground, and a rock cut her knee. Her canvas shoes slipped off, and the Red Army cap toppled to the dirt.

“I’m American,” she shouted. “Not Chinese. See?” She tried to point to the whiteness of her skin, hoping it could save her.

With the butt of his rifle, the younger of the two soldiers rolled her onto her back. He reached down and yanked the gold chain Caleb had given her from around her neck and stuffed it into his pocket. The phoenix charm flew off and landed in the water with a quiet plop and was gone, never to rise again. The Japanese soldier pressed the wooden handle of his rifle between her legs and started to lift it to strike her. She had seen Chinese women with broken pelvises and now knew that this was how it was done.

“I’m American,” she shouted again. “Not Chinese! Please. Don’t.”

The second soldier watched impassively as the younger one paused to unhitch his belt. She hoped that the older one wasn’t in favor of the new barbarism of the Imperial Army. But as she tried to form the Japanese words to appeal to him, he surprised her by sweeping his bayonet past her face. A searing pain burned her cheek. Shirley covered the cut with her hand, and blood leaked over her fingers.

The younger man leaned down and ripped open her tunic. She covered her exposed breasts as the two men laughed. She wanted to scream but had suddenly lost her voice. As the young one raised the rifle again to hit her, she opened her mouth and croaked out the words “General Shiga!” Hearing her own voice gave her courage, and she shouted again in English, “I am a friend of General Hayato Shiga. Do not harm me!”

The older one gripped the boy’s arm.

“I am his nurse!” She scrambled away from them in the dirt. “I am Nurse Carson. Have you not heard of me? I am special nurse to General Hayato Shiga. Hal. We call him Hal. Shiga. You know the name. Shiga!”

She sensed that neither man understood anything she said except the general’s name. She repeated it again and climbed up from the dusty ground. She wrapped the torn tunic around herself and rose to her full height. She towered over them, and even though she continued to shake all over and her heart was beating frantically, she glared into their anxious faces.

“General Shiga would not want you to touch a finger to me. General Shiga very angry if you harm American woman. General Shiga says no!”

This last point seemed to register. They conferred. She tried to think of how to escape, but it was impossible. With the exposed trail across the open plains, the Japanese soldiers would simply shoot her in the back as she rode away. The older one took over then. He pushed her with the butt of his rifle toward her horse. She climbed on, and he took the reins as the soldiers mounted theirs. The three started off. Shirley glanced back at the spot where she had been attacked, her shoes and the Red Army cap left in the dust.

Twenty-two

Charles woke to pounding on the door. He untwisted his pajamas and threw on the dragon-patterned silk top but didn’t bother with the buttons. Before hurrying downstairs, he checked for his mother in her room. The bed appeared not to have been slept in, and he saw no signs of her return. Out the moon window on the stair landing, autumn sunlight struck the mission wall, less harsh than in summer, more golden. He assumed she was making her way back to the mission through that soft haze over the plains. But it wasn’t lost on him that he now had not one but two parents missing out there. The thought no longer made him feel weak in the knees or panicked. Instead, a hard resolve tightened in his chest.

In the front hall, Kathryn and two of his mother’s choir friends had been let in. Mrs. Reed and Mrs. Carr whispered to one another as the nurse’s assistant in the Red Army trousers and cap eyed them, her arms crossed.

Kathryn called out to Charles as he joined them, “We have come to take you home, dear boy!”

He wiped sleep from his eyes with his elbow and pulled the loose shirt around his ribs. It had gotten too small, leaving his middle exposed. As Kathryn studied him from his bare toes to the top of his head, Charles regretted not dressing properly.

“My, he has grown, hasn’t he?” Mrs. Carr said.

“We’d best lock up our daughters,” Mrs. Reed whispered.

Kathryn planted a damp kiss on his cheek and took his hand. “Ladies, I shall take full responsibility for him from now on.” Then she turned and patted his chest through the wrinkled shirt. “Are you packed?”

Charles nodded, his eyes on the hand that remained on his chest.

“We’re counting on you to escort us. The men won’t come along until later. The plan is for women and children to meet at the southwest gate at noon. Bring only what you can carry. Reverend Wells is trying to see if some of our possessions and furniture can be shipped home, but I’m sure your mother knows about that. Where is she, anyway? Somewhere around here, I assume?”

The ladies peered into the quiet clinic, where one or two assistants tended to a handful of patients. All but a few of the beds were empty now. No new influx had come for days, perhaps weeks, the military action having moved even farther away from town, Charles guessed. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the muslin curtain rustle at one of the front windows. Dao-Ming turned at the dining room corner and headed for the basement steps.

Mrs. Reed peered into the clinic and said, “I had no idea Shirley had this going on.”

“We were overrun with Chinese at first, too,” Mrs. Carr said, “but I can’t imagine still having them in my home.”

“She lost her husband so recently, poor dear, and must have needed to fill the void.”

Charles wanted to speak up on his mother’s behalf but didn’t. He hoped Kathryn might defend her, but instead she asked, “Any idea where she is, Charles? Or have you lost track of her like the rest of us?”

“I’m sure she’s around somewhere. She’s terribly busy and has a great deal to manage. We’ll be at the gate at noon. No problem. Thanks for telling us.”

He escorted Kathryn and the ladies out, shut the heavy door, and leaned against it. The smoky scent of the dark carved rosewood enveloped him, so familiar and commonplace here. He wanted to let out a shout. He was finally departing, leaving behind every strange, exotic smell and sight he had become accustomed to over the years. But where was his mother? She must be on her way home, he thought, and would surely arrive at any minute. At least he desperately hoped so, and he pushed from his mind any thought otherwise.

Charles strode to the top of the basement steps and called down for Dao-Ming, thinking she might know his mother’s whereabouts, but no answer came. Perhaps she had helped his father with the pigeons, but he couldn’t imagine how she had been of any use with the radio. Though now that he thought about it, he recalled her slipping into the cellar many times. He had always assumed it was to collect the root vegetables that Lian stored down there, but who knew the real reason? Charles headed into the clinic. He stood over the young Communist nurse in khakis and Red Army cap as she knelt beside a grandmother stretched out on a cot.

“Good morning, miss,” he said to the nurse.

He didn’t know her name but had overheard his mother and Captain Hsu discussing the diligent way she performed her work. She seemed all right, a little plain and far too serious. He wondered if he could get a smile out of her.

“So, what’s the story, morning glory?” he tried.

She didn’t look up.

“I bet you don’t even know what a morning glory is. How about, hey, good-lookin’, what’s cookin’? Nothing, right? Hardly any food around here at all.”

“Go away, we are busy,” she finally said, still not looking up.

“I’ll leave you alone, but I wonder if you’ve seen my mother?”

The young Communist nurse finally glanced up at him, and the edges of her lips rose slightly.

“Hey, I got a smile out of you,” he said. “You like my outfit?”

Her expression became stern again. “No Nurse Carson here,” she said and stood. “She has served her purpose and is no longer needed. We are better off without her.”

“Gee, that’s rude,” Charles said. “She set up this clinic, you know? It’s our house.”

“This is not your house. Never your house.”

“How ungrateful. After all she’s done for you.”

The young woman turned back to her patient. “You are a young, insignificant boy. Leave us alone.”

“Now, wait a minute,” he said and touched her shoulder.

The woman jumped up and put her hand on the butt of the pistol tucked into her Red Army belt. She began to shout, “Get out! No more foreign devils here! America business steal North China coal, become rich, while we Chinese starve. You and Mother do nothing to stand up to the yellow sons of whores from Japan! You are bad people, not good! Get out before I shoot you!”

The woman waved her pistol in the air as Charles stumbled out the front door and onto the porch. He held on to the column, his head dizzy from her crazy words. A searing hunger bit into him. As he caught his breath, he noticed that only a few Chinese passed by in the empty courtyard below. For days, he had seen them packing up and departing. The ground they left behind was hard and cracked from their many footfalls. As the last of the campfires died out, litter remained strewn throughout the compound—scraps of newspaper, old sheets of tin, wooden planks, and piles of rubbish everywhere.

Across the way at the Reeds’ house, Charles saw the Reverend lugging his wife’s and daughters’ straw suitcases down the porch steps. The vegetable garden to the side of their home had been trampled and used as a bathroom for weeks, but one lone sunflower still hung its dried head over the churned-up soil.

Each spring, Caleb Carson had been the first to farm that small plot. Charles would follow his father outside and helped push the seeds deep into the thick yellow clay, patting down the soil and shaping it around each thin stalk. He could practically feel the dampness of it between his fingers. Charles rubbed his hands together now. His father had been swallowed up by that same entrapping earth. Charles wrapped his shirt tighter around his ribs and knew that the unsettled air meant rain.

When he was young and the autumn storms finally came, he and Han used to splash in puddles that formed quickly in the parched dirt. They painted each other’s faces with mud in great slashes like war paint, becoming Indians on the American Western plains and doing war dances in the rain. Charles wondered why they had never pretended to be characters from Chinese lore. He had insisted on cowboys and Indians, and Han, being a good guy, had gone along with it, playing Tonto to Charles’s masked man. They never switched parts because why would they, when Charles was the leader and Han the follower?

Charles felt his cheeks flame. As they grew older, Charles had imitated suave leading men, Cary Grant or Clark Gable, while Han was always cast as his trusty manservant. He spat over the side of the porch now and slapped his palms on the railing. “Damn,” he said to no one and let himself wonder if maybe the Communist nurse was right: he and the other Americans had been squatters all along. Outsiders who never knew the truth but barreled ahead anyway, insisting on their way. His mother had tried to help with the clinic, and the Chinese had followed her instructions, but she had never been in charge. Captain Hsu, and now this young Communist nurse, and perhaps other Chinese whom Charles didn’t even know about, actually ran the show. Charles and his mother had thought they were the leading actors, when really he could see now that they were but extras in China’s fast-moving play.

He set off down the steps and across the courtyard, slipped down the alley, and came out in the servants’ quarters. The same eerie emptiness met him there. He didn’t bother to turn toward Han’s house. He knew that his friend would be on the front lines by now: happy to choose his own role and not have it assigned to him by his American friend.

Han had been the braver of the two, Charles realized now. Han had worked hard since he was a boy, been loyal to his father, and always performed his duties with care and respect. By comparison, Charles had never been leading-man material at all. He caught his breath and leaned a hand against the rough-hewn wall of Lian’s quarters, as he had that day when he had stood over Li Juan and tried to appear handsome and debonair. The poor girl had just come from the dangerous countryside, and he had tried to impress her with his new sneakers.

He turned and peered into the darkened room. Lian stood with her hands on her hips in front of her mother, who lay on a straw mat with her arms crossed over her chest. The old woman had finally died, Charles thought. As he joined Lian, he wanted to offer his condolences and for once be of help to her and not the other way around. But he pulled up short when he saw that the old woman’s eyes remained open, her face set in a grimace.

“Mother,” Lian said, “you are behaving like a stubborn old mule.”

“That is what I am. Nothing more.”

“Hello, Lian,” Charles said softly. “Everything all right?”

“Do not bother us now, Charles-Boy. We must leave right away, but Mother refuses to go another step. She prefers to lie here and be raped and murdered. She wants my two precious daughters to be kidnapped by dwarf bandit soldiers and taken away on their trains to a life of servitude and misery. This is what happens when you are stubborn, Mother, and refuse to do what is best for all!”

Charles didn’t know what to say, but a bright voice responded from the kitchen area.

“I say we leave her,” Li Juan said.

Lian snapped her fingers hard. “If you think that, you are no child of mine. We bring her.”

Li Juan stepped closer. “I’m not carrying her.”

“We will find a way. This cot will serve as a stretcher.”

Charles cleared his throat and ventured to ask, “Can she walk at all?”

Li Juan ignored him and headed for the door, dragging a bundle made of a sheet with his mother’s initials monogrammed on it. Charles followed close on her heels as she stepped into the alley.

“I came to say good-bye,” he said.

Li Juan finally looked at him and giggled. “What are you wearing?”

He looked down at his ill-fitting colorful pajamas. “Nothing, it doesn’t matter. I just want to say thank you.”

“For what?”

“I—” he glanced into Lian’s small, dark room and then up the rutted path with ditches on both sides that stank of human waste. He wanted to say for everything. For absolutely everything. “I’m not sure,” he offered. “But thanks.”

“My stubborn grandmother is going to get us all killed.”

“Please take our horse if it’s still there.” He reached for Li Juan’s hand. “And our cart. Yes, take it, too.”

Lian appeared on the threshold, and Charles stepped away from Li Juan, who didn’t seem to mind one way or the other when he let go of her limp fingers.

“The horse and cart are long gone, Charles-Boy. Weeks ago.”

“How about the mule?” he asked. “I want you to have our mule.”

“We were going to use it, but somebody stole it last night. But thank you,” Lian said and smiled very slightly. “You must go. Mission women and children leave at noon.”

“I know. I’m ready.”

“You are not such bad boy after all,” she said.

With that compliment, Charles found himself throwing his arms around his old amah. He had to bend far over to do it, but his large hands held on to her sturdy back. He wanted her to know something very important. She had kept watch over him and spent years setting him on the right path. But now she pushed him away, and he didn’t mind. That was just her curt manner. When he stepped back, he saw that she had tears in her eyes, too.

“Thank you, Lian,” he said and bowed.

She did not bow in return, which struck Charles as somehow right. Instead, she appraised him.

“Charles-Boy, you look like monkey in that outfit. Go home and change right away. You disgrace the family name. I did not raise you to look a fool. Go!”

“I’m sorry. I’ll change right away. I apologize, esteemed Lian,” he said and started to leave but then stopped again and asked, “But do you know if my mother got back to the mission last night?”

“She is not back yet?”

Charles shook his head.

“That’s very bad news. We received word about trouble at camp out on the plains.”

Li Juan took her mother’s hand.

“But even if she is not back in time, you must leave.”

“I will. But how do you know what’s going on out there?”

Lian waved his question away. “What matters is Captain Hsu and others will protect your mother. I will radio them to say that she has not returned here.”

“You know how to do that?” he asked. “Who else used that radio?”

She wiped her hands on her apron as she always had when it was time for him to stop pestering her. “Charles-Boy, there is much you do not know and much you will never know. Off you go, now.”

He bowed for a final time and dashed up the alley again. He would change out of his childish clothing, gather his things, and meet the others at the southwest gate at noon.

Twenty-three

Yellow dust blew in sideways from the Gobi. Shirley held an arm up to protect her eyes and kept her mouth shut to avoid swallowing loess, the sticky topsoil that was inescapable at this time of year. Scraps of paper, dried leaves, and other detritus whirled across the desolate streets. For days the Chinese had been packing their belongings and fanning out into the countryside, but she couldn’t imagine how they had fled so completely. The Japanese Imperial Army had returned to town, its soldiers standing in shadowed doorways and on street corners.

The two soldiers motioned for her to dismount. The older one used the butt of his rifle to push her up the steps of the former municipal building. Yellow light poured down from the open door, and Japanese soldiers streamed in and out. None of them seemed to notice the thinly clad foreign woman holding on to her torn shirt, blood and bruises dotting her limbs. Shirley feared that they considered her just another body, a nameless victim to be finished off when the order was given. She wondered if the British missionary mother had thought the same thing or if she and her family had been set upon too suddenly.

Once inside, they prodded Shirley down a hallway and into a storage room, the door abruptly locking behind her. She crumpled with her back against a damp wall. As in the antique shops she had browsed in Peking, Chinese furniture was stacked to the ceiling—teak tables with angular legs, high-backed scalloped chairs, and even old Tupan Feng’s elegant daybed. She had heard that like hedonistic emperors of ancient times, he used to lie upon it when meeting his subjects here in the government building. His sins of excess and greed seemed childlike to her compared with the Japanese now.

Fear and exhaustion swirled over Shirley, and before she knew it, she was asleep. After some time, Japanese soldiers returned and pushed her back into the hall, where more soldiers hurried past. Someone had her arm and yanked her to stand before Major Hattori. His eyes roamed down her body. Shirley held her tunic closed and tried to control the shaking. Hattori signaled for the soldiers to prod her up the steps and into the general’s office. As the two officers chuckled at her, Shirley did not lift her eyes from her bruised and dusty feet. Her knee had bled down her leg in shocking red rivulets, and her arms trembled as she squeezed her ribs. The major turned and left the room, closing the door behind him. Shirley felt certain that no one would question the general—Princeton-educated or not—if he chose to finish the job the soldiers had begun by the stream.

“You have wasted our time,” he began in his perfect English.

Shirley finally dared to look up. General Shiga sat in the banker’s chair with his boots on the desk, his uniform as crisp as before and his lip curled back. Only his eyes seemed different. They appeared gray and unflinching and dull. She tried to remember him as a boy back in college but could not. This man before her had become as impenetrable as that foreign Asian boy in America had once seemed vulnerable.

“We are done with you.” He took a sip from a fine white teacup and set it on his orderly desk. “I should let my men do as they wish.”

A shiver started in her shoulders and made its way swiftly down her back. Her knees began to buckle, but she righted herself. She wanted to stand tall as she always had in moments of difficulty. She felt a tear roll down her cheek, and when she wiped it away, blood stained her fingers. Words had fled her mind. Only one thought raged.

“I need to find my son,” she whispered.

The general tapped the cup with his heavy gold class ring—a cruel and taunting sound. “They have left the mission,” he said. “We let them go. We have other concerns.”

“But I must go with him,” she said, trying to regain her voice. “Please, General, help me.”

He lifted his legs off the desktop and set his boots on the floor with quiet finality.

“I will be your nurse now. I can tend to your officers.”

“It is too late for that. Your son will travel to Shanghai and board a ship out of China and away from his mother forever. He will make a new life in America and will be fine without you, probably better off. Americans are far too sentimental about such things.”

As she gripped the edge of his desk to catch her fall, her shirt came open, and she hunched over quickly to cover herself. The British mother had no longer cared, so Shirley had reached across to close the woman’s blouse and wiped the blood from her pale skin. The bodies, Shirley recalled, so many wounded bodies that she had helped, not once feeling squeamish or frightened. But she understood now that she had seen too much suffering. She had held the hands of Chinese boys as they took their final breaths, their own mothers far away. She could not bear to have it end like that for her and her son—to be separated and torn from one another like the women and soldiers she had tried to save.

“Please,” she said again, “I must go to him.”

General Shiga stood but remained behind the desk, and Shirley was grateful that he didn’t come closer. She feared she might faint if he did. Although he wasn’t threatening her, his presence filled her with the terrible dread and panic that she had held at bay for weeks.

“You will tell me the location of the Red Army camp and help us find Captain Hsu,” he said. “Then you may see your son.”

Shirley’s head throbbed, and she blinked several times. “Captain Hsu?” she asked. “I hardly know the man.”

The general slammed a hand on the desk, and Shirley flinched. “I give you one chance,” he said. “You lie to me again, and I no longer care what happens to you. Now, tell me, where is the Eighth Route Army camp?”

Her voice came out high and thin. “Your soldiers found me on the trail that leads to it.”

“We already know the location of that Red Army camp out on the plains to the east. We attacked it this afternoon.”

Out the window, the dust-clogged sky grew dimmer. Shirley realized that hours must have passed while she had slept in the storage room. Night was falling rapidly now. “You attacked there today?” she asked.

“We did away with it. Even the Reds with their unmanly guerrilla tactics are far inferior to us.” General Shiga strode to the window, and Shirley studied his unrelenting reflection in the glass. “But their leaders escaped. They are a wily bunch and know the countryside better than we do. We simply finished off the wounded. There is no point in taking prisoners. We have orders to destroy all.”

The general’s words cascaded over her as one thought drowned out all others. She needed to see her child and escape this madness together. She held the wicker chair to steady herself and brought forth the courage to ask, “What do you want me to do?”

He turned to her. “Tell us the location of their headquarters in the mountains. We could bomb the whole range, but that would be a waste of our resources. You will get me the coordinates of the Communist camp.”

“But I have no idea where it is, General. I’m not a Red Army soldier. This foolish uniform I wear is just a costume. You must know that.” She cleared her constricted throat and made herself continue. “You know me, General Shiga—Hal,” she added, with trepidation, but he didn’t seem to take offense. “My stepfather is a successful capitalist. He owns a chain of shoe stores in Ohio. I couldn’t possibly believe in all this Communist nonsense. You know my alma mater. You graduated with distinction from one of our brother schools.” She dared to let go of the chair and started toward him, as if finally making her way across the dance floor of her youth. “You know I am a Vassar girl. We attended that spring social together, you and I. Now, please, just let me find my son and go home. I have no business being here. It’s been an awful mistake. I should never have stayed so long.”

Sweat trickled down her sides as Shirley joined him at the window. “Come, now, help us return home to America, where we belong.”

“Vassar girl,” he said with a snarl.

The wind whipped great clouds of yellow dust across the gloaming sky, giving the air a deep ochre tint. The Japanese flag on the pole snapped frantically, the shutters of the old municipal building banged, and the windows rattled. Then, in an instant, the rain began. Shirley thought she heard the general let out a pleased sigh, as if hearing the opening chords of a concert he was fond of remembering. She wished that the initial gentleness of the rainfall would bring him back to his former self. She would have liked to reminisce about the band that night. The gay lanterns on the campus lawn. The girls in their springtime dresses. She would have liked to be her former self—a carefree young woman who thought the world was safe and hers for the taking.

“Get me the location of the Red Army camp in the mountains, and I will see that you join your son before he leaves Shanghai,” the general said as he continued to gaze at the storm that was starting to rage outside.

Torrents always marked the change of season here. Shirley remembered Charles playing in the sudden mud puddles with his dear friend, Han. Her husband would dash home so they could press their rocking chairs close together and watch the great, sweeping power of the storm as it rushed across the plains. For so many years, rain had made all things new. Shirley wished for that now, for them all. To wash away the sins of violence and misery.

But the rain would do nothing of the sort, especially not for her. Shirley understood in that moment that if she did what the general asked and betrayed her friend and his cause, nothing could wash her clean. No matter how empty or terrified she might feel, or desperate to be reunited with her son, nothing could justify such a decision. And yet she felt she had no choice.

“I will try,” she said.

“Don’t play games with me, Mrs. Carson. If you do not come through with this information, you will not see your son, and I will leave your fate to my men.”

The general called for his soldiers. They pushed her out of the office and through the maze of other soldiers, then left her on the steps of the municipal building to make her way home in the driving rain.

Twenty-four

Caleb watched the rain as Han and Cook conferred at the back of the cave. They had set it up so nicely, with a fire and two cots, his own and one for Cook. All summer, Caleb had been grateful for the dampness inside the cave as it had helped keep him cool through night sweats. He was coming back to life. He felt certain of that. But then he heard their voices, and despite the pounding rain and their quick tongues, the crucial information reached him. Han whispered to his father that an update had come over the radio: Mrs. Carson was missing, perhaps taken by the Japanese or simply lost in the countryside. The night before, she had visited a Red Army camp out on the plains with Captain Hsu. Early that morning, an unexpected Japanese attack had struck nearby, and in the confusion, Mrs. Carson had disappeared. She had not been seen since, and subsequently, Han explained, the camp had been destroyed, only the Eighth Route Army leaders and some of the troops escaping in time.

Caleb wanted to shout above the sound of the rain and beg them to tell him it wasn’t true that Shirley’s whereabouts were now unknown. But instead, he bit his bottom lip and squeezed his hands together in an exercise they had devised to help him regain strength in his arms. Cook had overseen his recovery so well, and Caleb understood that the older man was protecting him from any painful news that might impede his recovery. He listened intently for any further updates and heard Cook say that he would confirm Mrs. Carson’s absence with Captain Hsu.

They were all out there, Caleb thought: his wife, his son, and his friend and comrade Captain Hsu. They all existed beyond the veil of water that separated him from the rest of the world. As the rain fell, swirling him in its embrace, he shut his eyes and tried to appear as placid as he could, though his mind roiled with worry and his body felt more infirm than ever.

“You have rested well,” Cook said. “But now you must sit up. The humors must move. Stir blood. Very important.”

For weeks now, Cook had tried to teach Caleb the Chinese understanding of the body. It was so foreign to him, and he was such a slow learner since the accident, unable to grasp the many rules and distinctions of his care. But he had come to believe that Cook’s approach was right: his blood had grown too still. Now, after overhearing the news of his missing wife, Caleb sensed that even his heart was slowing. Perhaps it would stop altogether. His tears started again, and Cook frowned.

“You feel much pain?” he asked.

“No, I’m just happy that my family is going home to America.”

At this, Cook nodded briskly and appeared satisfied. “It is best.”

He then stepped away and left Caleb to wonder how he could possibly go on living while she was out there alone in the countryside. He remembered the old phrases he had used to cheer his wife when she felt unhappy, which had been quite often here in China. Stiff upper lip, he had said. Carry on. How had he ever believed it possible to carry on, unscathed? He had thought he could come to China to make a difference, first with teaching at the mission and then with the Communist cause as well. He had wanted to help redirect the stream of history here, when in actuality, it had washed over him like the rain over the lip of the cave. How had he ever thought that he and his family could escape the shifting and slippery ground around them in a country not their own?

He fell asleep to the pounding of rain and awoke later to see the unmistakable silhouette of Captain Hsu by the mouth of the cave. Caleb sensed other men nearby, too. A great tiredness overcame him. He was not well. The rain had slowed to an even pace. Caleb knew it would go on like that for days. It made his bones ache even more than before. The pain seeped through him the way the water leaked from cracks in the cave walls. His wife was missing and he hurt all over. He raised a finger and tried to make his voice heard above the insistent rain.

“Captain,” he called.

It took several more tries before his comrade heard him and left the other men to come to his side. He knelt down and pressed Caleb’s hand.

“You are feeling better?” Captain Hsu asked.

Caleb wanted to smile but felt too feeble to do so. “I’m no better than I was,” he said.

“That is not what Cook tells me.” The Captain’s strong voice echoed off the watery walls.

What a vital man he was, Caleb thought. That scar over his eye and other marks on his face did not take away from his overall handsome and positive appearance. Captain Hsu would have stood out in any country but seemed especially unique in this setting, where hardship crushed the spirits of lesser souls.

“I have heard about my wife,” Caleb whispered. “Is she still missing?”

The captain bowed his head, his silver hair catching the lamplight. “I am sorry, my friend. We tried to spare you this news.”

“Don’t tell Cook that I know. He will worry about me.”

The captain looked out at the night. “We did not see the raid coming until it was almost too late. Our leaders barely escaped. And now, Imperial Army troops line the main roads and fill the town. Everyone who can has left. We are unable to return there without great risk. I have to assume that the Japanese took Mrs. Carson, though honestly I don’t know. But I will try to investigate.”

“Please don’t put yourself in danger, Captain,” Caleb said.

Captain Hsu patted the Reverend’s chest. “Danger is everywhere. It cannot be helped.” He stood and started to step away, but Caleb called him back.

“I’m sorry, Captain, but I have another favor to ask.”

“In addition to trying to find your wife?” The captain finally smiled. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes, and I’m eternally grateful to you.”

“I don’t believe in eternity, so don’t bother. What else do you want, old friend? Another blanket? The air is colder now with the rain.”

Caleb motioned for the captain to bend closer, and he did.

“I want you to shoot me,” he whispered. “Will you do that for me?”

The captain straightened up fast. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

With great effort, Caleb tried to reach for the captain’s hand, but Hsu did not take his.

“You should know I would never do such a thing,” he said. “We are not barbarians. I will ignore this insult because you are not yourself. Now, sleep. That is an order.”

Then the good man—a better man than Caleb thought himself to be—left the cave. Sleep came quickly and with it relief from the shame he felt for having asked his friend to commit a mortal sin, even if the captain did not believe in such a thing.

Twenty-five

Rain blotted out the night sky and made every surface slick. Shirley wove through the deserted streets and felt the dust turn to mud beneath her feet. A Japanese soldier followed a short distance behind, and she wondered if he was rogue and would attack her, although the longer he did not, the more she allowed herself to believe that he had been sent to protect her instead. When she glanced around again, he was gone. But then he reappeared in the destroyed market and later by the compound wall. She didn’t know if she could do what she had been asked to do, but for now, she simply walked, one cut and bruised footstep after the next.

The gates to the compound had been left open, and a pack of emaciated dogs stood over the body of the blind grandfather who had guarded the entrance. Shirley looked away quickly but had already seen too much. Though soaked through, she did not hurry or seek shelter. She wandered up the brick pathways in a daze as rain cascaded down her hair and fell in a wall around her face. At her home, she stumbled through the moon gate and up the wide wooden steps of the porch. The rocking chairs were gone from their usual places, and Shirley had no idea how long ago they had been taken. There was so much she had not noticed. The screen door had been stolen, and the handsome carved front door stood open, the small statue of the door god no longer keeping watch. She stepped over the threshold and nearly let out a cry at the familiar sight of her piano. It stood exactly as before, though the bench was missing. She longed to play it now, to hurl herself into a sad and stirring piece, but didn’t dare make noise or draw attention to the house. She had seen no one since entering the compound, though she had sensed movement in the dark.

She wandered into the clinic, where only a few cots remained. The supply station had been tipped over, the medical instruments taken. Used bandages and other debris lay tossed on the wooden floor. Hanging on the coat tree, along with several aprons, she found a rumpled sweater that had belonged to Charles when he was a younger boy. She pulled it over her head and breathed in the scent of him—neither sweet nor unpleasant but simply his. With the wind up and the season changing, she was chilled all the way through but began to feel warmer, sensing her son with her.

She hung a white apron around her neck and tied the sash at her waist. She had come to feel such purpose when putting on her nursing garb and entering the clinic. She stepped into the former parlor now. The cots and chairs had been taken, too. Only the wicker sofa remained, tipped on its side, the cushions gone. Dry newspapers and other rubbish littered the corners. Ashes from a recent fire glowed in the hearth, and she wondered if any Chinese people were hiding out in her home, a thought that would have once terrified her but now seemed almost a comfort.

She pressed her bare toes into the faded coral cherry blossoms on the sea of blue carpet. The gold screen painted with the image of the rising phoenix no longer stood in the corner. She had complained to Caleb that all the decorations in their formal rooms should be as fine as that elegant piece, one of her prized possessions. By having high-quality Chinese antiques and Oriental bric-a-brac, she had hoped to convince herself, as well as the Chinese, that she knew them and their world. She understood now that she had hardly known them at all.

“Oh, Caleb,” she whispered to the barren room, “you tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen.”

Outside, the rain continued, insistent and hard. It would go on like that for days, mesmerizing and casting a spell over everything. Shirley wondered how she would manage without her husband here to light a fire as he always had. How would she manage anywhere without him, and without her son, too? Without them, her life was as empty and eviscerated as this house. She needed to leave China, and not alone. She didn’t belong here any longer. She didn’t know where she belonged. But she understood that she must find Captain Hsu and do what needed to be done in order to join Charles, no matter the cost.

Light-headed and exhausted, she stepped outside and folded herself down onto the porch floorboards, leaning against the yellow-brick exterior. Out of the corner of her eye, she sensed the Japanese soldier at the side of the porch, hidden behind a post and a shrub the name of which she had never learned, its delicate yellow blooms just ending. Some part of her assumed the Japanese soldier would kill her whether she did General Shiga’s bidding or not. But as she started to drift off to sleep, she let herself consider that the presence of the soldier might actually mean Shiga intended to keep his word. With that conflicted and yet dimly promising thought, Shirley shut her eyes, tipped back her head, and within moments was asleep.

Some time later, she felt tugging at her arm and tried to knock whomever it was away. Her mind filled with an image of the dogs standing over the old man at the entrance to the mission, their teeth bared and growling. Shirley awoke with a shriek and scrambled to her feet. No dogs surrounded her, but before her stood Captain Hsu. She threw her arms around him and said, “You’re alive!”

He pushed her away gently and took her hand. “We have to get inside. It’s not safe out here.”

“Wait, I need air,” she said as she took him by the sleeve.

Shirley brought him to stand at the railing so that their voices could be heard above the rain streaming down the tiles. This would be the moment, she thought. If she did as the general asked, would the Japanese soldier take Captain Hsu to his execution in the town square or shoot him right there on her front porch? Would he kill them both simply to have it over with?

“I want to help the injured troops at the camp in the mountains,” she said. “Charles is gone with the others, and I can’t make it to Shanghai in time to join him. Please, Captain, let me be a real Red Army nurse.”

“You must come inside. You have a fever.”

“Please, for my husband’s sake,” she made herself continue. “I want to carry on his good works.”

Captain Hsu studied her hard, and Shirley wondered if he could tell that she was deceiving him. But then a surprising and kind light came into his eyes as he said, “Yes, I think you’re right. The Reverend would want that.”

“But where is the camp located?” she asked. “By what route will we travel?”

So the good captain told her. He said the road and the pass they would take to get there. He mentioned the name of the range and the distance. He spoke casually, helpfully, not knowing how his words would be used against him and his comrades. Shirley’s mind reeled with the magnitude of her betrayal. When he finished, she grabbed his hand and hurried him over the threshold and into the house. She expected the sound of gunshots but heard only the front door slamming and the scrape of the heavy bolt as it fell into place.

Captain Hsu placed his cool palm on her forehead. “You’re burning up. We’ll have to leave while it’s still dark, but you can rest for an hour first. Here, eat this.”

He pulled an oatcake from his pocket. She bit down on the hard surface, chewed, and swallowed with a dry throat. She started to follow him upstairs, but when they reached the landing, Shirley’s gaze drifted down, and she saw the curtain rustle by the front window. Then the basement door creaked closed. On the dusty floorboards in the front hall, she thought she recognized small footprints where there had been none before. The captain raised his pistol.

“It’s nothing,” she said, “only the storm. Someone left a window open in the clinic.”

But she prayed that it was not the wind but instead the miraculous young woman, Dao-Ming. She prayed that the girl would somehow know to warn her comrades. That was Shirley’s only hope to reverse what she had done.

In her bedroom, she was startled by her reflection in the vanity mirror. Bent and ghostly, Shirley looked as old as Lian but thin and drawn, the way her mother appeared after one of her benders. Shirley turned away and ached for bed. The blankets, quilts, and even the sheets had been taken. Captain Hsu led her to the mattress and helped her down. She curled on her side, and he covered her with his Red Army jacket. Shirley longed for the peacefulness she had felt at the Communist camp. Her life, and the lives of the Chinese around her, had seemed so full of promise then.

From the bed, she looked across to the window, where outside everything was monochrome darkness. All light had been snuffed out in the night, and she started to close her eyes. At that moment, from the southwest wall, a sudden flurry of pale wings caught the air as the flock of pigeons that Charles and Han had trained flew off into the pelting rain. Shirley sat up and followed them with her eyes as they flapped frantically against the harsh night.

Captain Hsu saw them, too, and looked across at her, an urgent question on his face.

“Run!” Shirley whispered.

Captain Hsu held his pistol high and, without a word, hurried from the room. Shirley heard his soft tread as he descended the steps and then fled across the front hall. She listened for the grating of the bolt on the door, but it never came. Nor did she hear his footfalls on the creaking porch floorboards. But then, in the quiet, she heard a shot, then another, and finally a third.

Shirley raced to the window, Captain Hsu’s Red Army jacket falling to the dusty floor. She saw nothing outside except rain battering the glass as night sealed the courtyard. She pressed her fingers to the pane and waited for something to tell her what had transpired below but saw no movement and heard no further sound. Her fingers left a ghostly print on the fogged glass, but that was all.

Some time later, from far off, she heard the low rumble of an engine. Approaching bombers, she was sure, come to finish off the mission. General Shia had not ordered her shot because, as he had boasted, he preferred to destroy all. The tangled history of this foreign outpost would finally and fully be obliterated. But instead of aircraft overhead, a black car drove in through the southwest gate. The beams of yellow light pierced the fog and rain. The car slowed to a stop in front of her home and idled ominously, waiting, she realized after a long moment, for her.

Shirley raced to her closet and pulled down a small valise from the shelf. Her husband’s gold monogrammed initials caught the car light as it reflected off the mirror. She put her only two remaining dresses inside the small suitcase and closed the latch. Next, she crouched before the empty fireplace and removed a brick from the back, then reached into the opening and pulled out a tin box. From inside it, she stuffed Chinese and American currency and her family’s papers into the pockets of her apron. She found her raincoat and hat on the hook by the door and pulled on socks and high Wellingtons. Shirley cinched the belt of the mackintosh around her waist, lifted the valise, and headed downstairs. She looked about for Dao-Ming but saw no sign of the girl.

Twenty-six

The train slowed, delayed once more by Chinese storming the tracks. They clung to the windows and climbed onto the couplings between the cars. More Chinese mobbed the corridor outside the compartment and pressed their faces to the inside glass. Charles barricaded the door with suitcases, and Kathryn pulled the frayed curtains closed. Then he hunkered down on the bench and pulled his father’s driving cap lower over his eyes. He knew he was lucky to have a seat, lucky to have made it this far through the dangerous countryside. Lucky, really, to be alive.

Despite the commotion, Kathryn fell asleep with her head resting against his shoulder. Charles pressed his forehead to the window and watched the blurred fields pass by. He wondered where Han was at that moment.

White steam unfurled as it drifted past the window and dissolved into wet air. He shut his eyes and let the rhythm of the train lull him until he remembered his father’s words again: Keep your wits about you, son. Steady nerves. Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes. Charles had no pistol, and his father had never meant for him to carry one. But Caleb Carson wanted him to be on the lookout for danger in a country fraught with it. Han, too, had tried to teach Charles to stay attuned to signs and signals, to listen more, and, as he had politely insisted, jabber less. Both his father and his friend seemed better suited than he to handle the adversity around them.

Charles shifted in his seat, and Kathryn finally stirred. Her charming little hat tipped off her head and landed in his lap. Her sleeping face under the dark bangs was cocked up toward him at an odd angle, and he couldn’t help noticing that even though she wasn’t close to his age, she also didn’t seem so old, like his mother. She had insisted he call her Kathryn. And as he whispered it now, it occurred to him then that she was his one and only friend. That seemed such a forlorn thought that it made Charles long once again to see Han. Kathryn continued to snore softly, so he nudged her harder this time. She swung around abruptly, tilted her head back further, and, with eyes still closed, pushed herself up to kiss him. Charles’s eyes opened wide, while hers remained decidedly shut.

“Hey, now,” he said as he gently pushed her off, “what have you been drinking?”

She snatched her hat back and placed it on her head.

“How about sharing?” Charles asked. “I’m dying of thirst. Give me a slug or two, and we’ll really pucker up.”

She pinched his rumpled sleeve and offered an embarrassed laugh but opened her silk purse and handed him a tarnished silver flask. She had already finished off a third of it. Charles was determined to catch up. The booze burned the back of his throat, heated his chest, and plunged deep into his empty stomach, sending heat straight to his brain. A minute before, he had felt friendless in this world. Now he had a girl on his arm and hooch in his hand. He’d been around people who drank but had never tasted liquor before. He’d also never kissed a girl before and felt it was long overdue. He was finally a young American, headed home.

“That’s fine Kentucky bourbon, not some lousy Chinese firewater,” Kathryn explained as she straightened her skirt. “My father gave it to me, and I kept it in the back of my closet the whole time I was here. There were temptations galore to break it open, but aren’t you glad I waited until now?” She took the flask from Charles, screwed it shut and dropped it into her purse. “But not a word about any of this, kiddo. It was just a little dream you had.” Kathryn shut her eyes and rested her head against his shoulder again. “Go back to sleep.”

Charles looked out the window at the rice paddies and wished he could melt into the wet earth pockmarked with rain. He wanted to get out of the stuffy compartment but knew he should relish this moment of peace and privacy. Instead, he felt trapped and ashamed. It would have been grand if Kathryn James had been his girl. But she wasn’t his girl. She was just some older woman at the end of her rope. When everything was going to hell around you, you went that way, too.

His father didn’t believe in hell. He said it was an invention of zealots intended to frighten people into believing. Reverend Caleb Carson didn’t care for mumbo-jumbo to fool the ignorant masses. We behave well on this earth, he had said, because that is our nature. Humans are inherently good and cooperative, and when we are not, stories of devils with pitchforks won’t make us rise to our higher selves. Charles had heard his sermons about human goodness all his life and had always assumed they were true. But he wished he could show his father what he had seen over the past weeks. Hell is real, Dad, Charles would have said. And it’s here in China.

On the muddy road beside the train track, the throngs marched forward, stumbling and fighting their way to safety. Charles hadn’t seen any Japanese soldiers for a while but knew they were out there. At first, the rain had come as a welcome surprise, but already it was making matters worse. He had seen farm trucks and the black sedans driven by officials stuck deep in watery ruts. But somehow the people pressed onward, unyielding against the wind and slashing rain. The goddamn unlucky Chinese, Charles thought. Nothing ever seemed to go their way.

How his parents had ever thought it was a good idea to live in this country, Charles couldn’t imagine. He supposed he had his father to blame for that. But he couldn’t blame him for the way the earth had given way under him and he had died in a landslide. Caleb Carson had been pursuing his cause, riding out into the countryside to check on the churches up in the mountains. His father had died doing his Christian duty.

Charles hoped that someday he would be as dedicated to a good cause as his father had been to his. A doctor’s calling was like that—done for the sake of others but with the possibility, Charles hoped, of a fine-looking automobile parked in the driveway. No harm in that, he thought. He had every intention of growing up to be like his father, but not quite so dedicated as to get himself killed.

It was his mother Charles would never understand. The more he thought about how she had taken off for the Red Army camp, the less likely it seemed he would ever forgive her. His father had sacrificed his life out of the goodness of his heart. His mother, on the other hand, was just plain foolish, selfish, and wrong. His jaw tightened as he used a finger to follow a raindrop down the windowpane. Dusk descended, and he pressed his palm against the window and removed it quickly, leaving a ghostly print suspended for a long moment.

He recalled how they had sat together on the window seat in the parlor and watched rain fall in the mission courtyard. She pressed her hand to the pane, then removed it, and in their game, he would quickly place his own much smaller palm over the shadow of hers. As the mark of his mother’s hand faded, he had tried to catch it before it fully disappeared. Charles assumed that he would never hold that hand again, nor would he want to. He squinted at the rain rolling down the window beside him and swallowed with a dry throat again. He was on his own now with nothing but the fast-fading memory of his parents, both gone for good in China.

Charles felt certain that his mother must have known she was going to stay at the Red Army camp when she had gone there. Captain Hsu had probably convinced her. Shirley Carson wouldn’t come to Shanghai before his ship departed or even meet him later in America. She might never return from China at all. He would search for her in future newspaper photos standing alongside the Communist leaders—one lone, tall American woman, her eyes bright with zeal. It burned Charles up inside to think of how she had been willing to sacrifice everything for the Reds.

The train jolted, and from the corridor came voices raised in a heated altercation. The Chinese were always shouting about something, Charles thought. The compartment door inched open, and an ancient grandfather pushed his way inside, somehow managing to shift the suitcases piled before the door. Bent nearly double over his cane, he shuffled toward the empty seat. Kathryn hopped to her feet and was starting to shoo him out when Charles spoke up.

“Tupan Feng? Is that really you?”

The old man dropped onto the bench opposite and did not reply, his wheezing breath his only answer.

Charles whispered to Kathryn, “He’s like the ghosts in Lian’s bedtime tales—he never dies.”

“Not ghost,” Tupan Feng said, his voice, like everything else about him, surprisingly strong.

“Sure looks like one to me,” Kathryn said as she pulled the flask again from her purse, tipped it to her lips, and took another drink.

Tupan Feng’s bony claw swept the air. He pointed at her but said nothing more.

“Now I’m spooked,” she whispered. “Maybe he’s just a figment of our imaginations, the booze going to our heads.”

“Not figment,” Tupan Feng said.

“Sorry, honorable Tupan,” Charles said. “We don’t mean to be disrespectful, do we?” He nudged Kathryn.

She didn’t take the hint but muttered, “What do you bet he dies right here on the train, and we have to deal with it.”

Tupan Feng shouted, “I die when ready to die—in America!”

“America?” Kathryn asked with a laugh. “Is that so?”

Tupan Feng nodded and announced, “Charles-Boy takes me.”

Kathryn slapped Charles on the knee. “Good luck with that, sonny.”

In every tale Lian had ever told, Charles recalled that those who ignored the signs of the spirits met their downfall swiftly and painfully. Han had explained to Charles many times the importance of honoring one’s elders, respecting the way fate unfolds, and accepting that what must be must be. So although Charles’s head felt woozy, and he was getting a kick out of Kathryn’s bad manners, he rose to his feet and bowed before the wizened warlord.

“I apologize, esteemed old one, for our rudeness. We are honored to have you join us here in our compartment. I will escort you wherever you want to go.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Kathryn said.

Tupan Feng looked Charles up and down. “American boy will not die a fool.” Kathryn started to snicker until the old warlord added, “Not so for American woman. She is putrid turtle egg of the lowest order.”

She raised the flask to toast him, but this time, Charles took it from her and screwed on the cap. He then helped Tupan Feng stretch out on the bench and tucked his father’s driving cap under his head to serve as a pillow.

“You sleep now, old one,” he said.

But Tupan Feng’s eyes remained opened and unnaturally bright. “Charles-Boy, do not search skies any longer for Fenghuang. The Chinese phoenix will never land again in this country. Never, I say!”

“Okay, take it easy,” Charles said. “I won’t look for it again.”

“No more good fortune here! Just pain and suffering from now on. The emperor of all birds has flown!”

Charles nodded as he laid his topcoat over the thin and trembling shoulders, and the old man’s eyes finally shut. Then Charles sat again beside Kathryn. She shut her eyes, and before long, she, too, had started to snore softly.

Charles reached deep into his khakis pocket and pulled out his father’s chop. He studied the red ink-stained phoenix carved into marble, its wings partly spread and its head thrown back in defiance. Charles recalled that his father had used it on envelopes and papers written with Chinese characters in his spidery penmanship. He had seen the image stamped on files and telegrams hidden in the secret drawer at the back of the Reverend’s antique scholar’s desk, which Charles had come upon by accident when playing at his father’s feet as a boy. And Charles recalled the same small red stencil of the phoenix flying across the wall beside the two-way transistor hidden in the basement.

He pressed the chop into his open palm now, but it left only a hint of pink, the red phoenix fading. An undeniable thought billowed upward in Charles’s mind along with the steam that fogged the train window, making the countryside out there more shadowed and indecipherable than it already seemed: his father, and not just his mother, had most certainly been a spy. Charles wondered how he had ever thought he knew his parents at all.

Twenty-seven

Rain continued to stream over the lip of the cave all afternoon and evening. Caleb slept fitfully on his cot near the back wall, his bones chilled by the change of season. Deep in the middle of the night, he awoke and heard men whispering at the entrance. He did not call out and interrupt their meeting. He had already been too great a burden. He would be forever grateful to the Eighth Route Army for seeing to his recovery and knew he was still being cared for on the orders of Captain Hsu. Caleb had helped the captain by gathering information about the Japanese, but Hsu’s loyalty since his accident had far outweighed Caleb’s significance as a spy.

With some difficulty, he reached across to light the lamp and tried to see the soldiers’ faces in the dimness. But the men disbanded just then, and Caleb spotted Hsu’s profile as he departed, no doubt occupied with urgent business. Cook appeared abruptly beside Caleb’s cot and looked down on him with sorrow in his clouded eyes.

“We must leave now,” he said. “Very sorry, Reverend.” Cook pulled the wool blanket higher around Caleb’s neck, bowed, and started to back away.

“Wait,” Caleb called after him. “Please, what’s happening?” He tried to sit up.

“Much danger. Troops now depart. We come back when we can. God bless Reverend. Very good Christian man.” Cook bowed a final time and hurried out of the cave.

Rain pounded the rocky ground on the cliffside as dawn broke over the opposite mountain. Silver rivulets caught the first sunlight, growing wider and stronger with each passing moment. The cascade over the cave’s entrance resembled a true waterfall, as frothing and relentless as the one Caleb had stood under as a boy in summer in the White Mountains. He was inside it now and tried to imagine his brothers beside him. Their shivering bodies had been vivid with delight, unlike his body now, which shook with cold and fear. Caleb told himself to hold close the memory of his brothers. They had always looked after one another, and he prayed for that now.

The lamp, he noticed, had only a small amount of kerosene left. The fuel would burn down, but luckily dawn was almost here at last. Caleb watched the small flame and enjoyed the shadows it cast on the back wall. He thought of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and chuckled to himself. Of course it would come to this: a cornerstone of Western thought reenacted here in a distant Chinese cave. He had traveled all the way to the other side of the world, hoping to broaden his understanding of life through Eastern ways, but still remained saddled with a Western perspective. Though enlightened by liberal interpretations of the Bible and an eager proponent of Chinese communalism, Caleb knew he was no different from the ancient Greeks of Plato’s allegory. He remained chained to his cave with nothing to do but watch light flicker on the wall and long for his freedom. All knowledge was subjective. All life, a narrow illusion.

From overhead, he heard the swift, heavy footfalls of the Eighth Route Army as they marched out of camp. After a while, he heard nothing except the pounding of the rain again. The Reds were gone, and he was alone.

Caleb shifted on the cot to find the right position. He wove his hands together, raised his arms toward the lamplight, creased his thumbs, and flapped his palms. The shadows on the wall took shape as he hoped. A bird began to take flight in the manner his son had always loved. He watched the shadows of the wings soar and longed for Charles’s high and happy voice to beg him to continue.

He had used the name Red Phoenix yet was nothing but stagnant, barely healed bones now. He had no wings. He had no fine plumage and no myth to carry him upward. He was nothing but feeble hands folded in prayer once more. The bird on the wall took off in a cloud of pale wings, carrying with it the hope that he and his comrades had created here. Then his arms drifted down to his sides. Caleb rested and waited.

Some time later, he awoke to the hum of aircraft flying low. Reverberations of their engines echoed off the cave walls. The first bomb went off a short distance away, perhaps down in one of the ravines nearby. The planes whined as they circled. The second bomb landed closer. The third was a direct hit at the center of the camp, just up the cliff from Caleb’s cave. The mountain rumbled, and he sensed what was happening before it began. Rocks began to fall, slowly at first and then with greater force as they landed in front of the entrance.

Through the dimming lamplight, he watched the landslide begin. The heavy rain brought down the rocks, but it was the bombs that had done it. The Japanese had finally discovered the location of the secret Eighth Route Army base in the mountains. Caleb was grateful that the troops had escaped before the bombing began. Someone, he realized, must have intercepted word of the imminent attack and saved them. A spy had done his or her duty, and the soldiers, including Captain Hsu, had been spared. The excellent Eighth Route Army was safe, or at least would not perish in this air raid.

Caleb watched as rivulets of mud turned to thick streams that oozed into the cave, pouring over the boulders that continued to settle. The giant rocks stacked one on top of the next with surprising ease, and the mud formed a bond between them. Quite quickly the rising wall blocked out gray daylight. The boulders shifted as they were washed over by silt, and Caleb saw the entrance become sealed.

The lamp sputtered, the oil almost used up. Jesus had known the cock would crow and rose to meet his destiny. Caleb could not stand but knew his fate was fast approaching. But still he held out hope that his spirit could lift up from it like the majestic phoenix from the ashes, like his Lord. Caleb recalled Captain Hsu bestowing his code name upon him. “You will have many lives here in China,” the good captain had said. “Whatever you do to help the people will help you to change as well.” So it had come to pass. Caleb was a changed man, and for the better.

He let out a long, stuttering sigh, but the tears had dried from his eyes. No longer limp with weakness and fear, he felt his heart growing stronger in his broken chest. He was not sorely afraid. He would be embraced in heaven, or high on some desolate, craggy mountain perch. Soon to be released from the suffering of this world, he would be rewarded with God’s goodness. Washed away, yet not abandoned, Caleb would die in this cave in North China.

The light was snuffed out then, and all went dark. He could not see what happened next but heard the lamp topple from where it had rested on the ground. The mud flow knocked it over and carried it away with some force. He felt the earth rise up under the cot, wet and chilly on the underside of his legs. He pulled in his hands from the sides and crossed his arms over his chest, but the mud webbed between his fingers, and he felt it rise higher against his ribs. It sloshed over his chest with alarming speed. Quite quickly, the coldness cradled his chin.

He tried to sit up, but the surface of the cot was too slippery. There would be no escaping the mud. He allowed himself to finally think of her, his wife, Shirley, whom it pained him to leave behind. He pictured her as she stood tall and proud with her arms crossed, her hip cocked, and that saucy, inscrutable expression on her face that he had both adored and tried endlessly to correct. She would stride deeper into her life and carry on, her heart, he knew now, expanded by her time in China. She would do good works going forward, which gave Caleb great comfort.

And Charles, dear Charles. He would never know the man his son would become, so he thought back to the sensation of holding him in his arms when he was young. Caleb bent down to say good-night, and Charles gripped him tightly around the neck and planted a kiss upon his cheek.

The mud clogged his nostrils now and slid into his ears. The thick earth covered his eyes and oozed into his mouth. Caleb swallowed out of reflex, choked, then simply let his jaw hang open. He tipped back his head. The wet, moving earth became his pillow, releasing his spirit to take flight.

Twenty-eight

When she reached the top of the gangplank of the Gripsholm, the Swedish liner that had been assigned to take foreign women and children out of war-torn China, Shirley did not pause but pressed deeper into the crowd and finally made it to a railing overlooking the water. Dizzy from lack of sleep and hunger, she shut her eyes and steadied herself. When she opened them again, she saw shards of a new day dancing on the fractured surface of the Huangpu River as it led out into the East China Sea. She leaned back and peered into the blinding dawn. Its warmth on her cheeks felt like a reproach, an insistence that the natural world had carried on, unconcerned with all that she and others had survived.

In the North, she had grown quickly accustomed to living in rain and knew it as her element. Foggy, impenetrable night and damp shrouds during the day had suited her. The gloomy landscape mirrored her troubled conscience. Here in vivid Shanghai, the colors were too sharp, the voices too loud, the crowds impossible to comprehend. Shirley had been shocked to see that so many still lived, but that was only because those who had died were but a fraction of the sheer mass of humanity in China. The people had somehow carried on, she thought, in spite of the violence, and the mistakes, and the losses.

On deck, passengers crowded the port side several deep, and she sensed the ship listing that way. Although they were mostly foreigners, she assumed they were leaving behind family and friends and lives they had built here in China. They peered down on the frantic crowd below and counted their blessings. She wondered if many of them were leaving China with a mix of sorrow and elation but also, like her, with shame in their hearts.

As the first departure horn blared from the bridge and filled the air with electric excitement, she snatched up her valise and slipped into the crowd, in search of Charles. She wove through passengers from amidships to the stern but still didn’t see him and told herself not to panic. Not to fear the worst. She had hardly slept on the train from Peking, her body rigid with worry as she had tried to will herself to make it to the ship safely. But now that she was here, she began to fear that she and her son might not be reunited in China after all.

So many faces, the bodies pressed close together, all blended into a feverish mass. What if Charles was stuck on shore and unable to make it on time? If she left China without him, she could never forgive herself. As she continued to scour the strangers, she decided that if she did not find her boy soon, she would have no choice but to head down the gangplank before they pulled it up. She would charge back into chaotic Shanghai to find him.

Her eyes drifted over the many faces until the profile of a young redheaded man came into focus. He had taken up a prime position at the very center of the stern and stood in a jaunty pose. Charles did not notice her, so Shirley had a long moment to soak up the sight of him, her handsome boy who rested a new leather shoe on the railing and tilted his head in a cocky way. With his hair cut and slicked back, he looked so much like his father that Shirley felt a pang of both sorrow and pride. Charles seemed as charming and irrepressible as ever, she thought. At least, she hoped that was true. For now, she was just happy to see him happy.

Then she noticed her dear friend at Charles’s side. Kathryn’s cheeks, which had always had a rosy plumpness, hung like gray shingles. She had lost weight, they all had, and her gentle, girlish curves had been replaced by sharp contours. Although she wore a new Oriental-cut silk skirt and matching jacket in an elegant orange chrysanthemum print, her hair was tousled, and the bangs had grown jagged. She still wore a familiar hat to the side, though its velvet brim was crushed.

Shirley was watching them both when Charles suddenly tossed his head forward and spat over the side of the ship. She thought that wasn’t a polite thing to do at the start of a voyage and intended to tell him so but also felt relieved that he still had such boyish habits. Kathryn took Charles’s arm and scolded him playfully. Not the mother figure her son needed, Shirley thought, but not a bad friend to have, either. She began to elbow her way through the crowd to join them.

“Pardon me,” she said, “I need to see my son. Excuse me, I must get through to be with my son.”

A mother with a child in tow stepped out of her way, as if understanding the urgency of her request. When Shirley finally stopped before Charles, she lost all words. She stood paralyzed as she let the look on his face wash over her. For a brief moment, he conveyed the love that she had sacrificed so much to feel again. Shirley realized how terribly she had longed to see that light in his eyes.

But then, in an instant, his expression narrowed, and he squinted down, his forehead forming a tangle of lines. He glared at his mother, quite furious.

She moved closer anyway and threw her arms around him. She pulled him into her and held on for too long, she knew, but couldn’t help it. Charles felt so sturdy. His body not depleted like hers. He stood tall and with a broad back and wide shoulders that did not bend to hug her in return. He remained stiff, unforgiving, a plank of resistance. He pulled her hands from around his neck and stepped back. She stared up into his face with moist eyes, but he glanced off toward the shore.

Kathryn placed herself between them and wrapped her skinny arms around Shirley, a bony cheek pressing against hers. As her friend held on in an awkward embrace and almost toppled them both, there was no mistaking the alcohol on her breath. Shirley knew she should be concerned about Kathryn, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Charles.

“Thank God you made it,” Kathryn said, squeezing Shirley’s hands. “Aren’t we all the worse for wear? I haven’t seen a mirror, but I know I must look dreadful. You poor thing, is that all you have?” She pointed at Shirley’s flimsy valise.

“The clothes on my back,” Shirley said. “I gave my last two dresses to Chinese women on the train. They had nothing. My suitcase is empty.” Shirley glanced down at her raincoat and rubber boots and realized she still wore the apron under it and Charles’s sweater, which she had refused to take off for days, even as the weather grew warmer in the south.

“Not to worry,” Kathryn said. “The other ladies and I will share our new outfits. We had a chance to shop in Shanghai before boarding. Everything was contraband, our money going to the White Russian mafia, I’m sure. It felt criminal to contribute to the downfall of this sorry country.” Then she dipped nearer and whispered in Shirley’s ear, “You’ll have to give the ladies another chance. Teetotalers, I’m afraid, but not so bad otherwise. I hope you’ll join me for a little toast up on the main deck? You always were more game than anyone else. I’m sure that’s what made you such an excellent spy.” She pressed a finger to her lips.

Shirley saw Charles flinch at the mention of spying. She remembered the tantrums he had staged as a child and the silent brewing that had taken place before they occurred. She had always known him so well—sometimes better than he knew himself—and yet not any longer. She couldn’t be sure what he was thinking now.

“I just wish you’d told me sooner,” Kathryn continued. “I do so love a story.”

Shirley didn’t bother to correct her friend’s mistaken notion. It was Charles she needed to get to. Shirley reached across to pat his chest with an open palm, but he pulled back, leaving her hand stalled in the air.

“You must explain absolutely everything once we get away from this dreadful place,” Kathryn carried on. “Charles and I have been trying to piece it together, but now that you’re here, you can fill us in on the true goings-on.”

Shirley wished Kathryn would stop talking and finally spoke up. “What a handsome new suit, Charles,” she said. “You look sharp.”

He straightened the lapels of his seersucker but did not reply.

“I was so worried about you,” Shirley continued. “You have no idea how frightened I was that we might never see each other again.”

“Don’t be overly dramatic, Mother. We would have found one another eventually, although I was set to make the trip without you. When you didn’t return to the mission, I assumed you’d decided to stay with the Reds.”

The coolness of his tone rocked Shirley back onto her heels. “No,” she said. “I always wanted us to be together.”

He offered a sharp laugh. “Is that why you went off on the back of Captain Hsu’s mule?” he asked. “I watched you out my window that night. You looked perfectly content to be leaving.”

Shirley’s face went hot, and her dizziness returned.

“Kathryn and I both tried to convince you to leave your clinic,” he continued. “But being Florence Nightingale seemed more important to you.”

“That’s not true, Charles. You’re what’s important to me.”

“Or maybe you didn’t want to give up the perks of being a spy? I saw them drop you off down at the port in a fancy black car. Everyone knows those are only used by top officials.”

“I got here the only way I could,” she said, her gaze lowered and shoulders hunched.

The crew of Swedish sailors positioned around the ship shouted suddenly in various languages for the passengers to prepare for departure. The gangplank rose with a deafening clatter. The second horn blared, more a warning than a hopeful call. Below in the port, traffic remained stalled as trucks, carts, rickshaws, and tens of thousands of Chinese on foot blocked the way. Sirens and shouting rose from the crush below, frenzied and wild.

Farther up a boulevard that led away from the ship, Shirley thought she saw the black sedan that had dropped her off as it wedged back through the throng. She would never have made it on time if General Shiga hadn’t arranged her ride. When the train from Peking had finally squealed to a halt in the Shanghai station and the panicked passengers elbowed their way down the iron steps, Shirley had stumbled through great clouds of steam and out onto the platform. She stood stunned and knocked about by the Chinese until a Japanese soldier took her elbow and pulled her through the crowd and into a waiting sedan. As she settled on the slick leather seat, the driver stepped on the gas and cut a swath through the mobs. Chinese of all ages pressed against the car windows.

At first, she made herself look into their terrified faces. But there were too many of them for her to help, too many to even comprehend. She had squeezed her husband’s passport to her chest and found herself praying. She hardly knew how any longer and wasn’t sure to whom she prayed—God or Jesus, her husband or Captain Hsu. She prayed for forgiveness, even though she felt she did not deserve it. Still, she whispered her prayer and hoped that her words could be heard above the muffled cries beyond the closed windows that kept her safe inside the Japanese car.

Earlier, on the train, she had been taken to a private section at the back and given a Western-style meal. When the silver dome was removed from her dinner plate, she almost fainted at the sight of steak pooling in its own blood. A formal card accompanied the dish: Compliments of General Shiga. The note written in elegant English penmanship promised that he would look her up the next time he was in the States. Below his name he had written, Princeton, ’15, a final seal of their secret, insidious pact.

“Charles-Boy,” she said now, “I brought you some steak. I thought you might be starved.” She pulled a white cloth napkin from deep in the pocket of her raincoat and began to unfold it.

“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that. That was Lian’s name for me, not yours.”

“But are you hungry?” Shirley tried again. “I have something for you.” She held out the steak on the napkin in her open palm.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked. “No one has food like that anymore. Not even the fine hotels along the Bund.”

Kathryn leaned in and said, “I’ll eat it if he doesn’t want to.”

“Don’t take it,” he said fiercely to her. “It’s poisoned.”

Shirley wrapped the steak and stuffed it back into her pocket. “Don’t be so righteous, son,” she said, and tried to stand taller but couldn’t muster the strength. “I just thought you might be hungry.”

He glared down at her. “It’s corrupt, Mother. That steak is corrupt. Like the black car you arrived in. You left me to join the Reds, but now you show up in an official’s car with a Japanese driver. I saw him when he opened the door for you.” Charles shook his head in disgust. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to. I don’t even know whose side you’re on, anyway. I think you’re on no one’s side but your own, that’s what I think.”

“Jesus, Charles,” Kathryn said and swatted his arm, “That’s enough. If you were my son, I’d wash your mouth out with soap.”

“It’s all right, Kathryn,” Shirley said.

Charles was correct, she thought. She had made a decision for no one’s benefit but her own and her family’s, and at the expense of others. What she had done was a sin, and she didn’t need her husband here to remind her of that fact. Though not a highly religious person, she now understood in a biblical sense that she had crossed over into some vast, desolate valley and must spend the rest of her days wending her way back. Any mild impulse she had felt to do good for others seemed trivial in light of her treachery toward Captain Hsu. She would have to carry on his, and her husband’s, good works in repentance.

“I didn’t see her get out of any car,” Kathryn said as she swung toward Charles and rubbed a finger on his lapel. “You must have eagle eyes, Charlie. How did you spot your mother with the thousands of people down there? I think you were looking for her awfully hard.” Then she turned to Shirley and leaned on her arm. “You see?” she said. “There’s a good sign. Your son was searching for you, right at the same moment you were searching for him. Come on, now, you two, time to make up.”

Charles’s jaw remained set, and his arms stayed crossed tightly over his ribs.

“Is that true?” Shirley asked as she gazed up at him. “You were looking for me, son?”

Charles put his fine new shoe up on the ship’s railing and shrugged.

“Who knows, Charles,” Kathryn said in a slurred but cheerful tone as nudged closer to him, “someday you may even be proud of your mother. She’s our own Mata Hari.”

Shirley wanted to peel her friend off her son and might have done so, but Charles elbowed Kathryn away himself, and rather harshly. Shirley wondered what had gone on between them, though, whatever it was, he had no business treating a lady like that. Then something occurred to her about her boy that seemed even more disturbing and wrong.

“Charles, let me get this straight,” Shirley began. “You saw me from up here on the ship, and yet you didn’t come to greet me? What if I hadn’t found you in this crowd? Would you have simply waited until we bumped into one another like a couple of strangers?”

“Of course we’d find each other, Mother. We’re going to be on this damn boat together for over a month.”

With his raised chin and imperious tone, Shirley realized that he sounded just like her at her worst. Charles was behaving arrogantly, dismissing her in the way that she had dismissed others in the past. “Do you know that I would have left the ship if I hadn’t found you? Then what would have become of us?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to give up my spot here at the stern,” Charles explained. “We nabbed it two hours ago, and I’ve had to push people away ever since. We’ll get the best view as we leave old Shanghai, won’t we, Kathryn?”

Kathryn nodded, but Shirley sensed that her friend was as perturbed as she was.

“You couldn’t be bothered to meet me after all I went through to get here?” Shirley asked again. “I sacrifice any last vestige of goodness and now receive this in return?”

Before Charles could reply, a sudden giddiness began to overtake her, and she started to laugh. He seemed startled by her outburst, and although Shirley tried to control herself, a strange and pleasing lightness rippled through her body for the first time in weeks, perhaps months. She had lost her husband, betrayed her Chinese friend, and come frighteningly close to losing her son as well. It was all too much.

But she had not lost her son. And she would not ever risk that again. From now on, she had no intention of letting him go astray.

“Oh, thank heavens,” she sputtered, “I see now. I understand. You still need me. I believe you really do. You may be a young man,” she said as she straightened her spine, pulled back her shoulders, and spoke as sternly as she could, “but your behavior, Charles Carson, is completely unacceptable. Do you hear me, my boy?”

He lowered his chin in direct proportion to how high she raised hers.

“I don’t ever,” she said and poked his chest with a finger, “ever want to hear that you have disregarded other people as if you couldn’t be bothered with them. You learned that from me, and it is high time you unlearned it.”

The cocky, know-it-all expression slipped from his face. Before her stood the good boy that he truly was.

“It isn’t right for us to put ourselves first at the expense of others,” she said. “Do you understand me?”

He nodded.

“After all our years in China, I would think that you might know more about filial piety than you have shown me today. Would Lian have approved of your behavior?”

Charles shook his head.

“Would Han?”

“No, Mother.”

“All right, then,” she said and stepped closer and lowered her voice. “The truth is, I’m a poor example for you. But without your father here, we must help one another to stay on track. We are our brothers’ keepers, as he used to say. We are one. We must remind each other of that. But I think we can do it if we put our minds to it, don’t you?”

He offered another nod.

“Good.” Then she held open her arms and said, “Now, give your mother a proper hug.”

He fell toward her more gladly than she could have hoped.

“I love you, my dear, and always will,” she said.

“I know, Mother,” he said and dipped into her embrace.

After a long moment, he stepped back and said, “Here, come stand with us. It really is an excellent spot to wave farewell to China.”

The three Americans stood side by side at the railing. Shirley placed her hand around the metal, and to her happy amazement, Charles set his much larger one on top. Very few things in life, she thought, would ever feel as satisfying as that sweaty, strong palm on the bony back of her hand.

An image came to her in that moment, as it would often from then on: Captain Hsu smoking as he leaned against the wooden railing on her front porch, a wry, knowing smile barely raising the corners of his mouth. He would forever be pointing out to her her weaknesses and the weaknesses of her people. He would serve as her insistent reminder that she rise to be her better self, as she had, however briefly, on these shores.

The enormous ship began to rumble. Deep in the hull, its engine spun the massive propellers as ocean water frothed at the stern. The final horn blasted over their heads, startling Shirley so badly that she gripped Charles’s hand. He laughed and squeezed hers in return.

“We’re going home, Mother. We’re finally going home.”

He looked as excited as a small boy, the one she had known so well and still knew even now, though differently. A roiling wake formed behind them as they left the chaos on the shore. The boat created a fierce and unyielding undertow—so strong that if a person slipped and fell into it, he would be sucked downward and drowned in its thick embrace. History had done the same here in this country they were leaving behind. Her husband had slid into it and died instantly in a landslide, while Captain Hsu, Shirley feared, had met it in an enemy bullet on a wet and lonely night in the mission courtyard, with herself to blame.

And yet, despite her sorrow, Shirley had come to love this vast and maddening cipher of a country. The Middle Kingdom, as China had called itself from ancient times, Center of All Under the Vast Heavens, was known as encompassing all things in all seasons: the brick walkways and dusty grounds of the mission compound, the grassy plains where peaceful streams ran past willows, the purple-shrouded mountains in the distance, and even the teeming, desperate streets of Shanghai. As she and her son left it behind, morning sunlight sliced the air over the masses, coating the foreign bank and merchant buildings on the shore in a fiery wash.